Kenneth M. Jones II

Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer, MacArthur Foundation

CDP Board Chair, Ken Jones is Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He’s not the kind of leader to sit behind a desk. Before joining the Annie E. Casey Foundation in 2008 as Vice President and CFO, he traveled extensively in Africa, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe as CFO of Danya International, a public health and education organization, and Jhpiego, a nonprofit international health affiliate of the Johns Hopkins University. Before working in the nonprofit sector, Jones held corporate finance positions at Ford Motor, Pfizer, Mirant and Prudential.

Jones oversees finance, accounting, grants management, facilities, operations and information technology, but the Foundation’s core mission is “personally near and dear to my heart,” he says. While earning a bachelor’s degree at Boston University and a master’s degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Jones, a Bronx native, worked with Upward Bound and also ran summer programs for youth.

After earning an M.B.A. at the Sloan School of Management at MIT and launching his corporate career in finance, he continued to participate in Habitat for Humanity, Paint the Town and other community service activities.